This paper examines product markets in which long-term contracts and spot transactions coexist. Such markets are characterized by "multiple-price systems," wherein adjustment to supply and demand shocks occurs through spot prices, while contract prices are fixed, or adjust slowly. We derive the...

It is well recognized by economists that long-term contracting under an array of price and non-price provisions may be an efficient response to small-numbers bargaining problems. Empirical work to distinguish such issues from predictions of models of market power and bargaining has been sparse,...

The search for microeconomic foundations of non-Walrasian outcomes in labor and product markets has spawned many studies of contracting. This paper emphasizes the role of contracts for market equilibrium -- for many raw materials and basic industrial commodities -- in which long-term contractual...

Economic research on transfer-pricing behavior by multinational corporadons has emphasized theoretical modeling and institutional description. This paper presents the fiit systematic empirical analysis of transfer prices, using data from the petroleum industry. On the basis of oil imported into...

Achieving efficiency for many global environmental problems requires voluntary cooperation among sovereign countries due to the public good nature of pollution abatement. The theory of international environmental agreements (IEAs) in economics seeks to understand how cooperation among countries...

We use the 2003 Consumer Expenditure Survey and emissions estimates from an input-output model to estimate the incidence of a price on carbon induced by a cap-and-trade program or carbon tax in the US context. We present results on how much difference income deciles pay for a carbon tax as well...

Variable real exchange rates influence the country choice for location of production facilities by a multinational enterprise. With risk averse investors and fixed productive factors, a parent company should not be indifferent to the choice of production capacity location, even when the expected...

This paper develops a simple model of a polluting industry and an innovating firm. The polluting industry is faced with regulation and costly abatement. Regulation may be taxes or marketable permits. The innovating firm invests in R&D and develops technologies which reduce the cost of pollution...

The literature on voluntary provision of public goods includes recent theoretical work on the formation of voluntary coalitions to provide public goods. Theory is ambiguous on the equilibrium coalition size and contribution rates. We examine the emergence of coalitions, their size, and how...

Why cooperation occurs when noncooperation appears to be individually rational has been an issue in economics for at least a half century. In the 1960's and 1970's the context was cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game; in the 1980's concern shifted to voluntary provision of public goods; in...